david@fisher.UUCP (David Rubin) (01/18/85)
To continue our discussion of whether Nazi support was generally
stronger or weaker in Bavaria, I've included what facts I could dig up
in the past week. As you may recall, it was Martillo's thesis that
opposition to the Nazis was strongest among Conservatives, and hence
it was to be expected that Hitler would have received
disproportionately little support from Bavarian voters. He went as
far as to claim this as a historical "fact". This puzzled me, as I
doubted such numbers would be easily available, as the Weimar Republic
elected the Reichstag using proportional representation, thus making
state-by-state returns irrelevant and possibly not available. If
ANYONE should have such information available for the last Reichstag
(the 8th, elected 5 Mar 1933), please make it generally available: it
would provide an indisputable resolution.
Anyway, the last Reichstag was elected AFTER Hitler's assumption of
the Chancellorship, and was a direct referendum on Nazi rule. With
the Nazis actually in power, it can be presumed that their votes were
not meant merely as "protests" against "effete" Republicanism (represented
primarily by the Social Democrats and the Center), but rather an
endorsement of the Nazi program.
Below follows a list of the parties represented in the last Reichstag,
their strength, and whether the qualitative evidence available
indicates they were stronger or weaker in Bavaria than in Germany as a
whole. They are listed in an approximate spectral order, from the
right to the left.
Party: Strength: In Bavaria
NSDAP (Nazis) 288 At Issue Here
DNVP (Nationalists) 52 Weaker
DVP (People's Party) 2 Irrelevent
DSP (State Party) 5 Irrelevant
Centrum (Center) 73 Slightly Stronger
BVP (Bavarian People's Party) 19 Much Stronger
Parties with only 1 member 7 Irrelevent
SDP (Social Democrats) 120 Much Weaker
KPD (Communists) 81 Weaker
It appears that increased Bavarian support for the BVP is more than
cancelled by Bavarian reluctance to support the party of the labor
unions (SDP), the party of the Bolsheviks (KDP), and the party of the
Junkers (DNVP). I conclude that it is probable that the Nazis
recieved proportionately more votes in Bavaria than in Germany as a
whole.
As further qualitative evidence, consider the Nazi convention city.
Chosen for its unwavering devotion to Hitler, and the site of all Nazi
Party Conventions, it was chosen by the allies as the site for the War
Crimes trial also because it was in the region most devoted to the
Nazis; the city, of course, is Nuremburg.
Also consider the claims of East Germany to be exempt from
responsibility for Nazi crimes. While such a claim is preposterous,
no one disputes one of the points made in favor of that claim: that
the regions in the Soviet occupation zone produced substantially less
electoral support for the Nazis than the rest of the country. If this
is correct (and I believe it is), and Martillo is correct that Bavaria,
too, fits in this category, we are left with the strange conclusion
that Nazi support was strongest in the industrial areas of the
Rhineland and the northwest, i.e. in the regions where labor unions
were strongest.
Let me hasten to add that Martillo is correct in one respect: the
Nazis consistently did poorly in state elections in Bavaria. Note,
however, that the Nazis always did more poorly on that level than the
national level. It appears when Bavarians were called upon to vote as
Bavarians on Bavarian issues (or Prussians as Prussians on Prussian
issues), the party advocating the greatest reduction in the powers of
the states (the Nazis) did not fare well. I suspect it is these state
election figures, which are available, which Martillo had in mind when
he stated that historical facts indicated weak Nazi support in
Bavaria. However, it is the national elections which are issue, as
the Nazis were unable to gain control of any of the larger states
electorally. Their route to power was though the Reichstag, not the
local governments.
David Rubin
{allegra|astrovax|princeton}!fisher!david